


there's something tragic about you

by zweebie



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Crowey can't sit properly, Crowley Was Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Domestic, Ficlet, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, One Shot, Podfics Welcome, Post-Canon, Raphael!Crowley, and then came back with a completely unrelated fic, disappeared for another month, finally writing some good omens angst finally, yes i really posted every day for a month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 22:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20460611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zweebie/pseuds/zweebie
Summary: Sometimes Crowley and Aziraphale drive out late at night in the Bentley. The airbase is far out enough that the city lights don’t reach, and they can see the stars painted across the sky.Aziraphale watches Crowley. He feels like there's something he's missing. Something he's forgotten.





	there's something tragic about you

Sometimes Aziraphale walks down the stairs, late at night, when the sounds of the city are less silenced than muffled, and the light doesn’t bathe so much as hang, tinny and faint.

He can hear the crisp sound of pages turning, and his heart speeds up a beat. Who is in his bookshop? It’s only when he sees the familiar black-clad figure sitting on top of the desk and reading that relaxes.

“Crowley,” he says, relieved and, admittedly, a fair amount perplexed, “what are you doing down here, my dear?”

“This? Oh, s’nothing. Just some light reading,” Crowley says.

“Light reading?”

“Yeah,” Crowley says, shrugging.

“What is it?” Aziraphale asks, brightening a little. “Maybe I’ve read it.”

“Oh, it’s—nah, it’s nothing, like I said.”

Aziraphale looks at Crowley, but he doesn’t reveal anything else. The book is flat on the desk, pages up, cover down, and Aziraphale can’t see more than the navy cover. He can’t even quite read the words, not without his reading glasses. All the little blessings that came with being an angel—being able to read without glasses, for one—had gone since the almost-apocalypse. It was worth it, though. Worth losing that cheap little bit of magic for something much more magical in return. “Well, alright,” he says, a little disgruntled. “Just—be sure not to stay up too late.”

“Of course, angel,” Crowley murmurs, not looking up.

In the morning, the book is gone. Aziraphale makes a mental note to ask Crowley where he’d put it and where it had come from. 

There’s a notable gap in the astronomy section. 

* * *

One night, Aziraphale wakes up to darkness. Not the sort of darkness that falls when you turn out your light, but the sort of darkness that falls when the entire city does. The air is thick and the silence is thicker, and there’s a cold and empty spot on the bed next to him.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale calls, sitting up. Then, frantically, “Crowley!” He scrambles out of bed and down the stairs.

Aziraphale finds him on the sidewalk, leaning against the outside wall of the bookshop. He sighs in relief when he sees him. Crowley’s staring upwards, pale blue moonlight cast over his face. Aziraphale can’t read his expression. 

“Crowley, my dear, don’t leave without telling me like that,” he says, wringing his hands.

“Hm?” Crowley asks, then looks over at Aziraphale as if he hadn’t noticed him before. “Aziraphale,” he breathes, and there’s something broken in his voice.

Aziraphale’s brow furrows. “Crowley, I—I thought you were taken! I thought the demons got you, or...don’t do that again!” Crowley doesn’t respond, just gazes upwards. “Are you going to say something? You nearly scared the living daylights out of me!”

“I’m—ngk—I’m sorry, angel, I shouldn’t have,” Crowley says hurriedly. “I just…” he trails off.

“You just what, darling?” Aziraphale asks, softening. 

“The stars,” Crowley says, gesturing vaguely upwards. 

Aziraphale had been right—the whole city was dark, in a suffocating way. Aziraphale is used to the bustle of London late into the night. It’s such a change from the sweeping, silent hallways of heaven, from the curt nods and the days of nothing. Everybody’s moving around and living their lives no matter what’s going on elsewhere in the world, and that’s so beautiful, so human. But now it’s dark and silent, and Aziraphale suddenly can’t get a breath.

“Yes, they are very beautiful, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, just to be polite. 

He’s already turning to hurry back into the warmth of the bookshop when Crowley says something more. His voice sounds thin, far away.

“Do you remember them? The stars, how they were made?”

The question puzzles him, tugs at him, like an itch that he can’t quite reach. Like knowing a book is out of place, but not being able to figure out which one it is. But of course—he remembers. “Of course I remember, Crowley, Raphael made them. The Archangel Raphael. Before he fell.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley says, the word falling flat as if he didn’t have the energy to form it properly. “Yeah.” There’s a pause. “What do you know about the stars, really, Aziraphale?”

“I’m embarrassed to say,” Aziraphale replies, “almost nothing.”

“Really? Didn’t they teach you this in Angel lessons, or something?”

Aziraphale  _ tsks.  _ “There’s no such thing as  _ angel lessons,  _ Crowley, you know that. You were an angel too, in case you’d forgotten.”

This is the point where Crowley usually corrects him, reminds him that he’s  _ fallen,  _ tries to pull back. But instead, he just says, voice heavy with an emotion Aziraphale can’t place, “I haven’t forgotten. Never, not once.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. “Oh, Crowley.” He’s not sure how to continue, after that. Heaven is cold, distant. It’s only here on Earth that Aziraphale’s been confronted with the mess that is emotion, and he never knows how to meet it.

A gust of wind blows over them, crisp and harsh, and Aziraphale shivers.

“You’re cold,” Crowley says, looking up suddenly as if breaking out of a stupor of some sort. 

“Oh, no, no, it’s perfectly—”

“C’mon, Aziraphale, in you go,” Crowley says, groaning as he stands up, as if he’s sore. He must have been sitting there on the sidewalk for some time. 

“No, no, I must insist—” Aziraphale says, because he doesn’t want to be a nuisance.

“ _ I  _ must insist, Angel, that you go inside. C’mon, now,” Crowley says, pushing him through the door.

“Fine! Fine, you don’t have to push me,” Aziraphale says indignantly. 

“ _ In,  _ Angel,” Crowley says, and the door shuts, gently, behind them.

* * *

Sometimes Crowley and Aziraphale drive out late at night in the Bentley. The airbase is far out enough that the city lights don’t reach, or at least they fade from a harsh glow to a faint thing, an echo of a light on the horizon. Technically, Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t permitted to be on the runway. (Technically, they’d never been there at all; that fateful day had been erased. And technically, they never go again. The two figures on the ground out on the tarmac, picnic basket in hand, aren’t to be worried about. That’s what the general says. No one notices that strange shimmer in his eyes, or the way he calls each soldier “my dear.”) 

“That one, that’s Alpha Centauri,” Crowley says, pointing. He’s lying back, propped up on his elbows. Aziraphale sits next to him.

“The shimmery one?”

“I—” he cuts himself off. “Every star is shimmery, angel. It’s the third brightest. See, there?”

“Of course, yes, that one.” Aziraphale has memorized the planets and the constellations by now, but Crowley seems to enjoy telling him about them, so he asks, “Which one is Jupiter, again, my dear?” 

Aziraphale glances at Crowley, sees the faint smile on his face. He feels a little warmth inside him. 

Aziraphale knows what that feeling is, or at least he’s figuring out.

Crowley launches into an explanation, and Aziraphale watches him carefully, his thoughts halfway elsewhere. In the ruins of a church, reaching for a bag of books. In a garden, by an apple tree. Sitting down for dinner at the Ritz. And somewhere else, a garden of a different sort, someone with him, but Aziraphale can’t quite picture their face. All he knows is that they’re so achingly, heartbreakingly familiar.

He feels that warmth in his chest again. It’s something like love.

They open their picnic basket, eventually. A bottle of wine, prosciutto sandwiches. The blanket Aziraphale lays out is tartan, and Crowley teases him, but there’s not any bite to it.

“The stars really are quite beautiful, darling. Why do you know so much about them, really?” Aziraphale asks. It’s a question that’s been gnawing at him for some time. Crowley is by no means unintelligent, but this hardly seems characteristic of him. “I never did take you for the studious type.”

There’s a long pause. Crowley takes a breath, then says “I wasn’t always a demon, y’know.” 

“Of course not. You were an angel, before you fell.”

“Ngk—” Crowley makes a noise, frustrated. “Yes, yes, I was an angel, exactly. And I...created things. As an angel does.” He goes silent again, and Aziraphale feels the need to say something, positively aches with it, but he holds back. And Crowley speaks. “I was...I was something. Something  _ good.  _ And I  _ did  _ something good, and sometimes—” He looks up at Aziraphale, and there’s a sadness in his eyes millenia old, maybe older. “Wouldn’t you want to be reminded? That maybe once, just once, you made a mark on the world? More than shutting down the telephone lines, or starting traffic jams? That you aren’t all evil, aren’t all demon?”

There’s a moment of stunned silence, and then Aziraphale reaches down and wipes a single tear from Crowley’s cheek before it can properly fall. “Crowley, my dear boy,” he says softly, simply, “if you truly are a demon, and I’m not sure even of that as of late, then you are very well the  _ nicest  _ demon I’ve ever known.”

Crowley stares. And then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world (and it is, really), reaches up, takes hold of Aziraphale’s face, and kisses him. A single, startling press of the lips.

An interesting word,  _ nice. _ Simple and pleasant and worthy and good.  _ Nice.  _ It meant something else some years ago, although Aziraphale loses track of the exact number. Tidy, accurate. And that's what the kiss is. Simple and pleasant and worthy and good and so, so  _ correct. _ Like it's the only really  _ right _ thing in the world.

When Crowley pulls away, Aziraphale’s eyes are brimming with tears. Crowley reaches out hesitantly. “Was that alright, angel?” 

“Crowley…” Aziraphale trails off.

“Aziraphale, say something, please. I can’t—” Crowley’s voice breaks on the final word.

“It was. Okay, I mean.” Aziraphale says. “More than okay, really. Perfectly pleasant.” He blushes. “I'm sorry, it's just—that’s the first time we've done that.”

Crowley looks at him, and in his eyes Aziraphale can see what Crowley has lost. It’s so much. Too much to bear. Millenia, memories, days spent bathing in the sunlight. And there’s that aching familiarity again, pulling at Aziraphale. Like maybe he'd had more, once, than he can remember now. Like maybe  _ more _ was a person.

“No,” Crowley says. “Not the first time.”

**Author's Note:**

> (disclaimer: the crowley is raphael headcanon isn't mine, but it's been fanon for a while now - long enough that i couldn't find the original tumblr post, but if anyone had the link could you drop it in the comments??) 
> 
> this is the first fandom i've written for where angst hURTS to write, but i needed to get this out of me. thank you all for reading and i hope you liked it!! if you did, please leave kudos and/or a comment, or hmu on tumblr at @we-never-stop-fighting or on twitter at @wylan_vaneck!!


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